


One word turns into a war

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergance, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-11
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-01-15 08:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1297804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no bedding ceremony, but there was a bedding - no marriage could stand unconsummated, after all, particularly not one with such unstable foundations as theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Being alone's the only way to be

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Loose Tongues and Arrogance](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1281643) by [SecondStarOnTheLeft](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft). 



There was no bedding ceremony, but there was a bedding - no marriage could stand unconsummated, after all, particularly not one with such unstable foundations as theirs.

“I have never seen anything so beautiful in all my life as you on this day,” Willas breathed as he led her by the hand to the big bed under the bigger windows. “Truly, Sansa, you are a wonder.”

And she almost believed him, for he had yet to see what she really looked like.

He was so gentle that it was easy to believe him, though, as he guided her to sit between his legs, as he unbound her hair and combed it carefully with his fingers so it curled all the way down her back. Then, surprising her, he slid his arms about her waist and held her close instead of undressing her.

“I should like to make you happy, my lady,” he said softly, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. “Although I am not certain how I might do so.”

Neither was she, and that would likely prove a problem.

* * *

 

He had not reacted to her ugliness as she had expected, Sansa reflected several days later. The pace of life was slower at Highgarden than it had been at King’s Landing, if only because she did not spend half her time recovering from injuries inflicted at Joffrey’s hands and those of his knights, and she found herself with ample time to spend in reflection.

So she reflected. Constantly.

Mostly she reflected on what her life had become - here she was, the last Stark in Westeros, once a queen but now a lady only. She had dreamed of being Queen, when she was a girl, when she had seen only Joffrey’s gilded facade and not the rot within. Then, when she was Queen, she had dreamed of a release - of death, nothing more.

She had once dreamed of children as gilded as Joffrey, but then she had come close to that and had forced her babe from her womb. It had near killed her to do it, but she could not inflict Joffrey as a father on an innocent. She would never have forgiven herself.

She sat in her bath and watched the reflection of the tumbling creepers that draped outside her window in the water, and reflected on Willas’ lack of reaction to the scars that covered her body. She still wondered how it was he found her beautiful when she was so clearly not.

 _He will hate me_ , she decided, _when he discovers the truth of my father’s death. How could he not, when_ I _hate me for it?_

* * *

 

Everything about Willas was unlike Joffrey, and she found herself confused by it.

He sought out her company day and night, not to abuse her or bed her but simply to share her company - he delighted in many things, books and music and his beloved animals, and he gave an excellent appearance of delighting in _her_ , but considering how skilled an actor she knew him to be…

She wished to believe in his affection more than anything - it was so intense, so obvious in everything he did, from the way he gathered flowers for her on his way back from the stables in the mornings, to the way he always kissed the mark on the underside of her breast, the one Joffrey had branded her with, whenever they lay together. It was all simple, seemingly innocent and sincere, and yet it was too much for her.

After Joffrey, after his sweet words and vicious heart, how could she trust anything? Willas’ words were sweeter by far than Joffrey’s had ever been, after all.

His hands, though. His hands were so gentle, worn and calloused from all the work he put in with his animals, and they reminded her strangely of her father’s. She thought that mayhaps she could trust his hands, even if she dared not trust him.

 

* * *

“Sansa? Are you unhappy?”

_No, I am frightened of what will happen when you lose your temper, when you realise that you hate me as everyone else does._

“No, my lord - why should I be unhappy?”

* * *

 

His kisses tasted of summer and hope, and she had missed those things sorely, so she kissed him often - he never seemed to mind, seemed to enjoy kissing her as much as she did him, and that gave her the strength to ask.

“Why did you agree to wed me without complaint?”

_Because of your claim, stupid girl._

“Because I wished to know you.”

His words were honeyed, but Sansa’s taste for sweet things had long soured.

* * *

 

They still spent time in the sept together every afternoon, each quietly setting to their devotions and revelling in the other’s silent presence. She liked the reassuring murmur of his breathing, the creak of the pews beneath him as he adjusted his bad leg.

She liked walking back to the keep proper with him, too, liked how there was an odd sort of peacefulness about him after he’d spent time with his gods.

She wondered what changes her prayers wrought in her. She wondered if he would notice such small things about her, the way she noticed every tiny thing about him.

* * *

 

One tiny thing Sansa had wanted never to notice about her husband was the way his face changed when he told lies.

But, she had not gotten anything she wanted in a very long time.

* * *

 

“Do you remember when I told you about Joffrey’s suspicions? That he thought I was barren?”

Willas’ eyes were wide and guileless, and Sansa felt sick that he could lie to her with the same expression he wore when telling her how beautiful he thought her to be.

“Of course, my lady,” he said quietly, holding out his hand to her, an invitation to join him by the fire.

“Was it you that planted the idea in his head?”

Her door was barred to him that night, and would remain so for a long time - she had proven herself fertile, after all, was carrying a babe that would likely lie as sweetly as its father inside her, and would not give her body to a man who thought her a plaything even once more if she could avoid it. She had suffered enough of Joffrey to never want such a thing again.

* * *

 

Sansa was distantly aware of Willas’ distress at their sudden and definite parting of ways, but she could not bring herself to truly care - he had used her, just as every single person seemed to have used her since she had left Winterfell so long ago, and it sickened her, _sickened_ her, to think that she had trusted those soft eyes and gentle hands and that warm voice during her darkest days in King’s Landing.

He tried, though, to make things right - tried to explain, sometimes, when she could find no way of leaving a room when he entered it. She would not listen, because what was there for him to say? _My sister wished for a crown, and yours was the most easily accessible_?

She could not hate him - she had trusted him too long for that, had almost come to love him before she had truly come to know him, and he _had_ saved her from Joffrey, whatever his other sins, whatever the circumstances of that rescue - but she could not be easy with him as she had been before she had come to understand.

She wished that she was still the silly little bird she had been before her first marriage. She wished she was still as innocent as she had been when she left Winterfell.

She wished she could love him. She had always wished to love her husband, and be loved in return, but that was beyond her now.

At least she could lean on Cersei Lannister’s single piece of good advice. _Love only your children._

* * *

 

She nearly died in the birthing bed.

She went to it early, because she became angry, so angry when she overheard one of the serving girls speaking of _Lady Margaery’s third king_ , and realised that her lord husband had been keeping any news from the capital from her.

Joffrey was dead, he was _dead_ , and Willas had never thought to tell her. The cause of her ruin was gone from the earth, and her husband had withheld that information.

So she had lost her temper, as once she would have scolded Arya for doing, and he had simply held her tight from behind, his arms locked around her between breasts and swollen belly, catching her arms at the elbows so she could not struggle. He had apologised, over and over until she had screamed from the _frustration_ of his not understanding, and he had given one great, desperate sob, shouted back that he _loved_ her, and she had shrieked and thrashed and then nearly fainted from the pain.

She had nearly died in the birthing bed, but any pain, all pain, she would suffer any of it gladly a thousand times if that was the price she had to pay to hold her babe in her arms.

“Aelinor,” she said, a name that would not make her think of all she had lost, and she cradled the tiny little creature closer to her breast. “My Aelinor.”

“She’s perfect,” Willas whispered, brushing fingertips over Aelinor’s pink little cheek. “Utterly perfect.”

Rather than his lying lack of guile, there was only astonishment in Willas’ eyes, and they seemed less honey than usual, more sunshine in the godswood at Winterfell, not the same bright gold as it seemed below the Neck but richer for it.

She may not have been able to trust his affection for her, not even when he held himself straight with a hand on the mattress by her hip and leaned in to kiss her, naked hope in his warm eyes, but she could trust his affection for Aelinor. That would be enough. _Love only your children._

 


	2. Don't believe the things you tell yourself so late at night

Their marriage was the strangest thing Sansa had ever known.

She shared his bed twice a week - she would not share it more often both because she simply could not, not with how fussy Aelinor remained even at nearing two years of age, and because she still did not trust his affections to be sincere. So, twice a week, because it was all she could bear. To think that he would try to sweeten his quest for an heir with lies and falsehoods sickened her.

But he did sweeten it. Gods, she believed every moment she spent in his bed, in his arms, and felt a fool as soon as she left.

 

* * *

 

She believed entirely in his affection for Aelinor, and had never stopped being relieved that his adoration of their daughter had never wavered from the day of her birth.

"Isn't she wonderful?" he laughed, and it was true - Aelinor was every joy Sansa had left, and seemed to be a great part of Willas' joy, too. He laughed more with Aelinor than he did all the rest of the time together, and only stopped smiling in her presence when she was upset - he doted on her as other men doted on sons, lavished her with every attention a boy child would have received. Best of all, to Sansa's mind, he ignored the men who said he ought to try harder for a son, that he ought concentrate on getting a child on his wife and not on the child he had already.

Sansa loved him for that, in the part of her heart that she could not keep from loving him at all. She loved that he loved their girl, and at the same time wished that she could stop loving him entirely, wished that she could cut him out of her heart. 

Mistrust only went so far, it seemed, because she had tried her hardest to rid herself of him. She had come close, in the wake of... After they had lost the babe, had blamed him, had lashed out and screamed that she was paying the price for his sins as well as her own, and all he had done was hold her.

Well. Hold her, and beg her forgiveness. He had cried into her hair and let her slap and claw and hate him, and then he had kissed her brow and promised her that the pain would pass.

She sometimes saw him looking at Aelinor with a strange light in his eyes, a light that foretold a wistful remembrance of some childhood adventure with his brother or other, and Sansa felt like an utter failure for not providing him even with another daughter, never mind a son. She knew that that was never his intention, but it stung all the same to know that within two years of marriage, his mother had given his father  _two_ sons. They had been wed nearer to three years than two, and she had only Aelinor to show for her efforts, Aelinor and a tiny grave marked with a smooth white stone where their stillborn son had been laid, next to Willas' grandfather.

She could hardly bear to think of little Edwyn, her tiny son who had been as much her husband's image as Aelinor was. 

Did that mean the fault was with her? Between the tea she had taken to rid herself of Joffrey's babe and the difficulty she'd had birthing Aelinor, was she  _capable_ of giving him another _living_ child?

She had come so close, those few short moons ago, so desperately close, and he seemed not to blame her for her failure. But how could she trust the truth of that? How could she believe that he did not blame her, when she knew just how adept at lying he was? She had not dared to trust anything but his love for Aelinor since that long-ago day when she had overheard the news of Joffrey's demise, not even his desire for her - a desire that had given the appearance of becoming stronger over time, not waning as Cersei had warned her it would once she had birthed children, once her stomach and hips and breasts had become lined with silver spiderwebs. 

She wondered if he thought that pretending he lay with her for reasons other than an heir would sweeten it for her. Certainly that he sought her pleasure with as much dedication as his own was nice, but it was hardly enough to prove to her that his constant promises of love and devotion were sincere.

She wished that they were. She wished, sometimes, that she were still naive enough to believe that he loved her as her father had loved her mother, as  _his_ father loved  _his_ mother.

 

* * *

 

Nothing in his life had ever been so awful as Sansa's continued mistrust. Nothing had ever hurt so much save for losing little Edwyn before they could even know him. 

And yet, Willas still did not know what to do to earn his wife's trust.

It had been his, once, when he had not deserved it - the irony that she had trusted him when he had been using her, but refused to trust him now when he sought only to cherish her, was not lost on him. It left a bitter taste in his mouth, to know that he had only himself to blame, too.

At least - at the very least - she seemed to trust him with Aelinor. Had they been closer, he might have teased her that Aelinor would never have grown as close to him had it not been for her adored mama's trust in him, but she would never have admitted to trusting him, and besides, he had no clue how she might react to teasing.

Aelinor seemed to believe that he loved Sansa, which was something. She never seemed happier than when she found the two of them together, whether it be in the mornings after Sansa had shared his bed and he couldn't help but curl against her back, couldn't help but wind his arm around her waist and pull her tight to his chest, couldn't help but bury his nose in the downy-soft curls at her nape, couldn't help but wish for this for  _every_ morning, his wife in his arms and his daughter sneaking away from her nurse to climb into his bed with her curls all awry and her giggling mouth already smeared with strawberry jam.

But he could not have that, of course. Sansa permitted him to share two nights a week with her, and she was the one to choose those nights - he did not begrudge her that, of course, had never questioned those nights when she had not wanted to lie with him. How could he, knowing what she had suffered at Joffrey Baratheon's hands? No, he was no monster, and he would not bed his wife unless she was truly willing.

So, two nights a week with Sansa, two nights of seven in which to be her husband, not, not whatever he was to her. He did not know, if truth be told, and felt a liar when he called himself her husband except on those two nights.

He did not feel close to her other than those two nights, did not feel as though he had any claim on her even though they shared a daughter (and a son, although he did not dare mention Edwyn to Sansa, did not dare speak of the pain), even though she wore his colours and bore his name.

In truth, his daughter slept more often in his rooms than his wife did, and much as he loved Aelinor - and gods, he could never have understood how deep that love would run until the first time he had held Aelinor, still squirming and pink, not an hour after her birth. Sansa had still been sleeping, had slept near two days, and when he had not been out of his mind with worry for her (the bleeding _had_   _not stopped_ for so long) he had been awed by his daughter.

It eased his worries to think that, even when Sansa thought the least of him, she would never hate him. He did not think that she had it in her to hate anyone who loved Aelinor, and even a blind man could have seen that he loved his little one.

 

* * *

 

He worried constantly when Sansa's belly started to swell for the third time since their wedding not long after Aelinor's second nameday.

Well,  _worried._ He was beside himself with terror, because first Aelinor's birth had near killed her, and then he had near lost his wife along with his son when she had birthed Edwyn, so small and silent and drowned in her blood, her  _lifeblood._

He had taken Aelinor to the sept while the maester fought to save Sansa, that day, and gods forgive him but he had hardly given a thought to to the babe until Maester Lomys had sent a maid to tell him that his lady lived. The pain of the loss had near choked him then, but it was tempered a little with the relief of Sansa's survival.

She had blamed him, afterwards, and he had thought back to the sept as she screamed and cried, and could not fault her for doing so. He had prayed for her, not for their son, had given up on the babe as soon as the maester had hinted that he might not survive the birth and prayed with everything in him that Sansa might live.  _We might have other children,_ he had prayed,  _but please, do not take her from me._

What a fool he was, to so love a woman who could not love him in return.

"My lady?" he called, more nervous than he could ever remember being, just to be standing at the door to her solar! 

But Aelinor was there, playing on the rug by the hearth with her dollies, and he decided to be brave for her. His little one deserved as much happiness as he had had as a boy, and a large part of his happiness as a child had come about as a result of his parents' happiness.

He could make Sansa happy. He _could._ He just didn't quite know how.

"My lord," she said evenly, setting aside her embroidery and rising to greet him. She had hidden her pregnancy from him until to do so would be impossible, and the high waist of her gown only emphasised the heavy curve of their babe.

He felt weak, but as much as he feared the pain the birth would cause her, he could not help but long for more children, for  _this_ child, and as soon as he was close enough he pressed his hand to her belly. He had done so often while she had carried Aelinor, just to feel her move, to marvel at the miracle he had helped to create, and somehow this felt the same, this felt just as beautiful as her first pregnancy had. 

Something had been different, last time. Mayhaps it had been the pressure that had been mounted on her, the tension in the castle when every damned woman in the place had  _insisted_ that Sansa was carrying a boy, that Willas would  _finally_ have an heir. He did not know, could not have defined it had he been asked, but this was different. Sweeter, somehow.

"Up!" Aelinor insisted, tugging on his breeches until he acquiesced and then kissing his cheek in delight as he settled her against his chest. 

She seemed content to play with his hair and her own, so he turned his attention back to Sansa, back to the firm press of her stomach under his hand.

"Will you dine with me tonight, my lady?" he asked, hating that he sounded like a green boy proposing an illicit meeting with his first woman but knowing that she would smell out any false confidence, like one of his bloodhounds.  _Like a direwolf._ "Just you and I."

"Why?"

_Because I would like to spend time alone with my wife for purposes other than getting a child on her. Because I would like more chances than you give me to prove that I have been honest with you from the day I wrapped you in my colours. Because you are the most beautiful person I have ever met, and I wish you might like me, if you cannot love me as I do you._

"I should like to speak with you, Sansa," he said quietly. "We talk so little now. I hardly know how you fill your days anymore."

She looked up at him steadily, eyes blue and bright and completely shielded from him.

"Very well, my lord," she said. "But please request that we are not served peas - I am afraid that I cannot quite stomach them at present."

It was nothing, in truth, but it felt like a victory.

 

* * *

 

He was waiting for her when she arrived, his solar lit in soft shades of gold by sweet-smelling beeswax candles, the table and the legs of the chairs twined around with pretty amaryllis tendrils.

"This feels awfully like a seduction," she said sharply, and the effect was immediate - he recoiled as though she had slapped him, going so far as to take a step back before steadying himself.

She trusted in that - his accidental slips, the unfeigned shock when she caught him unawares (the way he cried out her name in the shadows of his bedchamber, sometimes even when she was not with him), those were things she trusted. His reactions when he had no time to school his expression, to pick his thoughts and words carefully, she trusted those as she trusted so little else.

"I did not mean it to be," he said, looking oddly upset. Oddly defeated. "I meant it as a surrender, my lady. I cannot be a stranger to my wife any longer, not without losing my mind. I... Please, Sansa. I do not ask for much of you. Give me this."

She was not sure just what  _this_ may have been, but she supposed that she could eat dinner with him. She could indeed give him that.

 

* * *

 

He made it so  _difficult_ to keep that little part of her that persistently loved him under control, sometimes. 

He went no further than to hold her hand, made no effort to touch her beyond that. He had always seemed to understand how little she liked being touched sometimes, how she sometimes craved touch, and had never made anything of catering to her moods. She loved him a little for that, and always had.

She hated herself for loving him even that much. It made it so difficult to remain suspicious of him.

"What am I to do?" he asked, and she remembered suddenly their wedding night, when he had whispered that he wished to make her happy, when he had been so achingly tender and careful. She had been uncertain when he guided her into his lap - Joffrey had never wanted that, had always wanted her to be absolutely certain who was in control - but had practically melted into his touch, into his body, when he had moaned her name and his eyes had rolled back in his head. "Tell me, Sansa, tell me how I might be your husband in more than name."

"You have fathered three children by me," she pointed out, staring hard at their hands so she did not have to meet his eyes. "You  _are_ my husband, in all the ways that count."

"But not all the ways that matter," he pressed. "I- I would not ask more than you are willing to give. I never have asked that. But please, Sansa, I beg of you - please have faith in me. I have never given you any reason to doubt me. I have not lied to you since I hid Joffrey's death from you."

"Willas-"

" _Please,_ " he said, and when she lifted her head he looked desperate, half wild and so beautiful her breath caught under her ribs, trapped below her lungs where she could not reach it.

She had lifted her other hand to his face before she knew what she was doing, and it ached somewhere sweet when he rubbed his cheek into her palm, his eyes closing tight and his teeth flashing white when he bit his lip. 

 _I do not know that I can trust him,_ she thought,  _but mayhaps I can trust that he feels something for me._

She did not call it love - she had left hopes of love behind her twice, once at her first wedding and then during that terrible fight before Aelinor's birth, and to call it love would be to welcome that foolish, childish hope back into her heart, when she did not have room to spare, when she did not think she would survive its loss a third time.

 _Love only your children,_ she remembered, and wondered if mayhaps that had been less sense and more bitterness. It had always been difficult to tell with Cersei Lannister.

 

* * *

 

"I wanted to give you a  _son,_ " she said, close to tears, when the maester finally allowed him to bring Aelinor into Sansa's chambers. 

He had not even thought to ask whether he had a son or another daughter - he had been aware, vaguely, that Lomys continued to speak beyond  _Lady Sansa_ and  _the babe_ and  _alive and well,_ and now that he was here, now that Aelinor was standing on tip toe with Sansa's maid watching her, trying to peer into the cradle, it seemed the most natural thing - nay, the  _only_ thing - to move closer, to draw Sansa into his arms and offer her comfort.

"Another girl," he said, "who will be just as well loved as her sister."

Sansa sobbed a laugh and wound her arms around him, and it thrilled him that she would give him this. 

"Have you chosen a name for her?" he asked. Sansa had named both of their older children, and while he would not have minded an opinion on the matter, he had given her that. It was a small thing, in reality, no matter that Grandmother grumbled about his children not having Reach names.

"I had thought that you might like to," she said quietly, lying back against the pillows - gods, he had not noticed how tired she looked, had noticed only that this time, by some miracle, she was awake and fairly well only hours after giving birth, not like last time or the time before. "She looks enough like me that she might need a Tyrell name to tie her to Highgarden."

"She looks...?"

The maid laid the babe in his arms just then, and Willas laughed in surprise at the tiny little face framed by a fuzz of tiny red curls that he found when he looked down.

"Her eyes are already dark," Sansa explained, sitting up a little so Aelinor could settle under her arm. "Maester Lomys says that means they'll likely stay that way, that they won't be like mine."

"Aster," he said, not wanting to look away from his perfect new daughter but wishing he could both watch her and see Sansa's reaction. "It's a type of flower, one that blooms just before winter comes - Aster Tyrell. Do you like it?"

It was not a victory when Sansa laughed, but it was something. It was a start.

 

* * *

 

She still did not trust him, but she  _was_ only human. It was difficult not to be happy in that moment, with him smiling beatifically at little Aster while Aelinor leaned against her and sang happily to herself.

It was difficult not to love him, in that moment.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from 'Parachute' by Cheryl Cole

**Author's Note:**

> Story title from 'Battlefield' by Jordin Sparks, chapter title from 'Cold War' by Janelle Monáe.


End file.
